


With Her Head in the Heavens

by Daegaer



Category: Shahr-e Sūkhté (Burnt City) RPF
Genre: Ancient History, Archaeology, Elam - Freeform, Elamite religion, Gen, Historical, Sumer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 16:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13012038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/pseuds/Daegaer
Summary: Sherdokht-Narundi is the tallest woman in the city. Her parents know that the gods have made her as she is for their own purpose.





	With Her Head in the Heavens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellen_fremedon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_fremedon/gifts).



In the days when no scribe yet knew why any should wish to write the names of the gods of Elam and had barely begun to write those of the gods of Sumer, Artavan-Šulpae, a merchant woman of the north, bore a daughter. "May the Great Lady Narundi sustain you," she said, when the midwife showed her the child, exclaiming over the baby's long legs, and so the child was called Sherdokht-Narundi, for the lions upon which the Great Lady sits.

Sherdokht-Narundi grew tall and straight, like a reed. As a child she could outrun any boy, and when she was ten summers old she stood as tall as her mother's husband.  


"Daughter," Tiz-Inshushinak, said, standing up from his weaving and stretching out his back, "you have grown taller since dawn. Your mother surely lay with a deva when she got you!"  


"Father, you need not be jealous," she laughed, as she always did, and kissed his forehead. "Soon I shall kiss the top of your head, as if you are _my_ child!"  


He laughed with her, and sent her to watch her mother at work, that she might learn to be as skilled a merchant as Artavan-Šulpae, but in his heart he turned the matter over and over, for is not the heart of a father always towards a child, whilst the mother's heart must be divided between the marketplace and the hearth? It was surely the work of a god, he thought, that his daughter grew so tall, but what fate this would bring her, what human could tell? 

* * *

When Sherdokht-Narundi was fifteen summers old she knew the language of her parents, and could speak enough of the tongues of the Cities of the Flood Plain to aid her mother in bargaining for the goods the merchants of Sumer brought north. All was well in such matters at first, when Artavan-Šulpae sat upon her mat, with Sherdokht-Narundi crouched behind her. The merchants from Akkad, or Nippur, or Ur would sit opposite and speak in the strange accents of the south, their scribes sitting cross-legged making tally at the side of what was agreed. It was only when the bargaining was finished and everyone stood that Sherdokht-Narundi felt the weight of her height as a burden, the strangers' eyes upon her, huge and round. The rudest of the southerners would laugh, so that she might wish her mother would knock over the bowl in which the scribe had placed the tally of tokens, and declare the bargain void. Instead she simply made herself as tall as she could, and stared them down. _The Lady Narundi sustains me_ , she said in her heart, though the words were hollow. _I am her lioness_.

"Do not weep, daughter," Artavan-Šulpae said, after one such meeting. "What are they but Sumerians?"

"They thought I could not understand them," Sherdokht-Narundi said, looking at the ground. "Did you not hear that merchant say that a man would need a ladder to lie with a woman such as me, my mother? Is his jest not truth? Not one man has come to you to ask for me."

"The gods have made you as you are –" her mother said hopelessly.

"Am I to grow until my head touches the heavens and I can see them with my own eyes? I would rather pluck my eyes out, mother!"

"May the winds carry your words away," Artavan-Šulpae said, making a gesture to avert evil. "Be of good cheer – what of Aretakh-Šamaš as a husband? You were always a good friend to him when you were children."

"His mother wants him to marry his cousin," Sherdokht-Narundi said. "She has already arranged everything." She turned away from her mother's hand and closed her eyes.

* * *

When Sherdokht-Narundi was eighteen summers old she stopped growing at last. She was taller than the tallest man in the city and the tallest of women looked at her and gave thanks that the gods had made them seem small beside her. Her stride was longer than a warrior's; her tunic was made of twice the length of linen as an ordinary woman's. When men looked upon her it was as if they looked upon the statue of a god, not a mortal woman.

In this eighteenth summer Sherdokht-Narundi dreamt a dream, and it seemed to her that the clouds broke around her head and she saw the gods walking to and fro. She was greatly afraid, for who can see the great gods and live? She quickly looked down, that she might not offend them, and was entranced by the sight of her city far below. The people went back and forth, like the toys of children, and it seemed in Sherdokht-Narundi's heart that she could see the pattern of their lives better than they themselves ever could. Great compassion for the tiny people touched her, and she cried out, "Oh, that I could tell them what I see so clearly!" And when she looked up once more the Great Lady Narundi, sitting upon her lions, was watching her and She said, _Your head has touched the heavens, but do not fear, you will not pluck out both eyes._

The next day Sherdokht-Narundi told no one of her dream, but went walking in the marketplace, idly bargaining for a length of cloth, a finely woven basket; mere trifles to give her parents. She watched a group of boys, old enough to test their strength against each other, young enough to still find no shame in playing in public. They kicked a white stone back and forth, trying to pass it back and forth between pairs of boys. All at once a ray of sunlight shone into the eyes of the boy who had possession of it and his kick went astray. The stone crashed into Sherdokht-Narundi's face and she fell to the ground, soundless, all her world gone dark.

When she awoke, Sherdokht-Narundi heard her parents' voices raised in fury, and a stranger begging that they not blind his son in revenge. Her father was so mild, she thought, why would he want to blind anyone? It made no sense, so she allowed the gods of darkness to take her from the place again.

When she wakened properly, she felt the bandages upon her face and the memories of the marketplace came into her heart. It seemed to her that a voice spoke within her, reminding her of once-spoken words against heaven. _The gods have judged me_ , she thought, and wept from her one eye.

"Don't cry, my love, I beg you," Tiz-Inshushinak said, beside her, and took her hand. "Wife! Wife, she's awake!"

Artavan-Šulpae ran to the bedside as if she were not a dignified merchant of advancing years and seized her daughter's other hand. "My child," she said, and wept, "my sweet child."

"The boy did not mean it," Sherdokht-Narundi said. "It was my fate."

"We know," her father said. "You told us – you have been talking so much, daughter. You said _Be lenient_."

"Your father does not wish the foundations of your heart to tremble," her mother said. "You sat up and said, _Be lenient with the lad, I see more clearly now than I did heretofore._ That was when we knew a god was speaking through you; I called for a priest at once to ask what we should do."

"What is it we should do?" Sherdokht-Narundi said, sitting up, suddenly hopeful that she would be as she was, though the whispers in her head scolded her for such vanity, telling her she was as she was made for a purpose. Her parents looked at one another.

"The priests have told us," Tiz-Inshushinak said, "or rather, you have, while you lay senseless."

"The god in you told us all that the city elders must do," Artavan-Šulpae said firmly. "For now, daughter, you must rest. The bone of your eye must heal first."

Sherdokht-Narundi lay back, closing her eye. Her parents were so kind, she thought, to have laid her in their own bed, and covered her over with the best coverlets. She wished to tell them that she loved them, but she was so tired, and Narundi's voice in her head was terrible. The thought of healing was wonderful to her.

* * *

At twenty summers, Sherdokht-Narundi was the tallest and most conspicuous of women in the city. Her hair hung unbound and uncovered over her shoulders, and her clothing was brightly dyed and embroidered like that of a person of the highest quality. Most striking of all was her gaze, which few people could bear for long. For while her right eye was deep brown and like the eye of a normal woman, her left had an iris of gold, from which spun out rays like those of the sun, all brightly shining against the black of pitch. It was a triumph of the goldsmith's art; no one in Elam or Sumer had seen the like before. The people of the city, although they found meeting her gaze difficult, were very glad of Sherdokht-Narundi's presence. It was known far and wide that her vision with the golden eye was clearer than mortal sight could be, and that she could see the truth in any matter. With such a famous seer living in the new-built House of the Lady Narundi, the city was indeed blessed.

Sherdokht-Narundi walked through her city, her golden gaze upon the people, sustained by the lady of the lions.

**Author's Note:**

> As it seems that Elamite culture was influenced by Mesopotamian culture, the characters' names use a mix of Elamite and Akkadian gods' names, (along with Old Persian name elements mixed in), and the legal principle referred to is also Mesopotamian, whereby an injury might be legally compensated by having the same injury inflicted on an equivalent member of the defendant's family. As women seem to have been important as economic actors in Shahr-e Sūkhté, I've allowed daughters to be automatically legally equivalent to sons for the sake of the story, which isn't the case in the Mesopotamian texts.


End file.
